Happy Halloween!
Monday, October 31, 2011
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Too much already!
Mike Clayton at Shift Happens! has a nice post on portfolio prioritization. He asks this question:
Why do so many Organisations Resist Rationalising their Project Portfolios?And, then he answers his own question with five reasons:
- Patronage
- It's all too difficult
- Is it really essential?
- Loss aversion
- Lessons unlearned
1.Lack of clear links between the project and the organisation’s key strategic priorities, including agreed measures of success.
2.Lack of clear senior management and Ministerial ownership and leadership.
3.Lack of effective engagement with stakeholders..
4.Lack of skills and proven approach to project management and risk management.
5.Too little attention to breaking development and implementation into manageable steps.
6.Evaluation of proposals driven by initial price rather than long-term value for money (especially securing delivery of business benefits).
7.Lack of understanding of, and contact with the supply industry at senior levels in the organisation.
8.Lack of effective project team integration between clients, the supplier team and the supply chain.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
A great place to work
Over at HBR Blog, Tony Schwartz waxes on the 12 Attributes of a Truly Great Place to Work. We've all seen lists like this one, but take a look at some of the comments to the blog. They are both amusing (as in: fire yourself before they can) and insightful (like, it's all about trust)
Admittedly, the first six are a little expensive for many and assume a brick-and-mortar environment, (provide a gym, and provide good food in the cafeteria) but the universally applicable advice gets started in number 7.
However, I skip all the way to 11 (provide learning and skill development opportunity) and 12 (stand for something besides profit--which I take to be a surrogate concept since there are non-profits and government units that can benefit from this list)
In my mind, to not be constantly learning is to be going backward, and backward is not forward to a better future. And, surely, even if the business of business is business (I think a CEO of Coke said that), there's got to be more to it than that, although I admit that the business of business is not God and Country. When I moved from the DoD to private industry, I learned that pretty quick!
Admittedly, the first six are a little expensive for many and assume a brick-and-mortar environment, (provide a gym, and provide good food in the cafeteria) but the universally applicable advice gets started in number 7.
However, I skip all the way to 11 (provide learning and skill development opportunity) and 12 (stand for something besides profit--which I take to be a surrogate concept since there are non-profits and government units that can benefit from this list)
In my mind, to not be constantly learning is to be going backward, and backward is not forward to a better future. And, surely, even if the business of business is business (I think a CEO of Coke said that), there's got to be more to it than that, although I admit that the business of business is not God and Country. When I moved from the DoD to private industry, I learned that pretty quick!
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Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Quote of the day
“You know, it’s O.K. to head out for wonderful, but on your way to wonderful, you’re going to have to pass through all right, and when you get to all right, take a good look around and get used to it because that may be as far as you’re going to get
Bill Withers, R&B singer and philosopher
Perhaps a more complicated rendering of "best is the enemy of better", but a more elegant statement, to be sure.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Is everything a hammer?
Well, our friends at Dark Matter have raised another issue that we found provoking, to wit: have we gone too far in some cases with the visual display thing? In other words, having invented the hammer, do we use it for everything? All the world is not a nail, afterall, so perhaps some pause is warranted.
Now, to be fair, the Dark Matter crowd is all about safety, complexity, and and technology risk, especially as it affects human reactions in human-system situations. So naturally, Dark Matter is all over this stuff.
On the other had, as project managers (rather than system engineers) we have some obligation to test and challenge the various solutions, even we don't have the competence to rule things in or out. It's sort of the project equivalent of "reign but does not rule".
Setting up independent design review boards--sort of the red team equivalent for proposals--with 'grey beards' to give independent opinion is one way to do it. (Does everyone recognize the term 'grey beard' or am I dating myself?)
In the post that got our attention, the issue was the elimination of certain tactile responses replaced by visual indicators. The case in point is the stall indication on the Airbus that crashed near Brazil a couple of years ago. The traditional "stick shaker" had been eliminated, as well as some other traditional tactile oriented systems.
There are all kinds of stories like this. In Gene Kranz's book "Failure is not an option" he describes similar debates between the rulers and the reigners. There was a lot at stake.
This stuff is not to be taken lightly, and certainly not to be delegated to self-appointed teams without a disciplined tie to established saftey regimes.
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Now, to be fair, the Dark Matter crowd is all about safety, complexity, and and technology risk, especially as it affects human reactions in human-system situations. So naturally, Dark Matter is all over this stuff.
On the other had, as project managers (rather than system engineers) we have some obligation to test and challenge the various solutions, even we don't have the competence to rule things in or out. It's sort of the project equivalent of "reign but does not rule".
Setting up independent design review boards--sort of the red team equivalent for proposals--with 'grey beards' to give independent opinion is one way to do it. (Does everyone recognize the term 'grey beard' or am I dating myself?)
In the post that got our attention, the issue was the elimination of certain tactile responses replaced by visual indicators. The case in point is the stall indication on the Airbus that crashed near Brazil a couple of years ago. The traditional "stick shaker" had been eliminated, as well as some other traditional tactile oriented systems.
There are all kinds of stories like this. In Gene Kranz's book "Failure is not an option" he describes similar debates between the rulers and the reigners. There was a lot at stake.
This stuff is not to be taken lightly, and certainly not to be delegated to self-appointed teams without a disciplined tie to established saftey regimes.
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Friday, October 21, 2011
Those process guys!
I was musing with a colleague the other day about "those process guys" who sometimes miss this bit of wit:
In any event, to give my friend a concrete example, I told him about a study I did on "the cost of a memo", circa mid-late '80's that goes like this:
This arc took about 8 years to execute as we learned that with technology the idea is not to replace item for item in the process; it's to ditch the process and do something different with the technology.
I call this distructive improvement, but others talk about distructive innovation.
And we learned this lesson: putting in a bunch of IT personal application tools that save 10min here and there may not result in any real productivity or cost savings. It's rare that all these little segments coherently add to one headcount that can be released. You can't fire or transfer an FTE, only an integer person. So, as we saw in the 80's, and to some degree the cycle is beginning again, especially with ERP installs, there is capital spending without commensurate return to the business.
Another example, not project management, and further back: the transistor originally just replaced the triode tube, but the circuit design and functionality were not that much different. It wasn't until we grasped the idea that the transistor was a lot more than a 3 pin replacement for 3 pin tube did the whole digital productivity thing take off.
In any event: remember the wise words: It's often better to do away with the trains than to spend the effort to make them run on time!
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Rather than make the trains run on time, it may be better to do away the trains altogetherI acutally think I read an interview with Steve Balmer of Microsoft where he said something like that, but I don't think he took his own advice.
In any event, to give my friend a concrete example, I told him about a study I did on "the cost of a memo", circa mid-late '80's that goes like this:
- In the beginning, there was no personal computer. As a director, I wrote memo's to my staff in long hand (I hear that is no longer taught in school) and gave the scratch to my personal secretary to type on a Selectric with correcting tape. She then gave me the typed copy to edit, retyped it for my signature, and then she printed and distributed the memo through the office mail. I calculated the cost of a one page memo at about $50. (I may have under calculated, upon reflection, but this was '85 or thereabouts, so we worked cheap then)
- Sometime in the mid to late 80's, I bought my secretary a Mac and printer to replace the typewriter, but otherwise the process was the same. Cost went up to $60 to pay for the hardware.
- Then, I bought myself a Mac and I could type the memo and send it to her for editing and printing. The process saved a few minutes of my time but we had an extra computer, so the cost of a memo is now about $70. A lot of IT spending so far, no productivity gain, and a greater expense. General manager is not happy!
- Then came email networking adoption, and I could mail the memo myself. The cost has not gone down, still $70, but now the secretary has idle time (charged to the cost of a memo since the charges have to go somewhere). You can't fire part of a person, so we had to find something else for her to do.
- Then, memo's went out of style, replaced by the world of casual email correspondence. My time dropped a lot (per memo/email), so the cost per email dropped to about half or less of the formal memo, call it $30.
- Then, finally, with nothing to do, replaced by calendar applications and email, we fired the secretary, and the cost dropped again to about $10.
This arc took about 8 years to execute as we learned that with technology the idea is not to replace item for item in the process; it's to ditch the process and do something different with the technology.
I call this distructive improvement, but others talk about distructive innovation.
And we learned this lesson: putting in a bunch of IT personal application tools that save 10min here and there may not result in any real productivity or cost savings. It's rare that all these little segments coherently add to one headcount that can be released. You can't fire or transfer an FTE, only an integer person. So, as we saw in the 80's, and to some degree the cycle is beginning again, especially with ERP installs, there is capital spending without commensurate return to the business.
Another example, not project management, and further back: the transistor originally just replaced the triode tube, but the circuit design and functionality were not that much different. It wasn't until we grasped the idea that the transistor was a lot more than a 3 pin replacement for 3 pin tube did the whole digital productivity thing take off.
In any event: remember the wise words: It's often better to do away with the trains than to spend the effort to make them run on time!
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Frank Gehry on projects
I love architecture, though I'm not an architect, and never studied architecture. Of course, I love system architecture, which is both different from building and construction per se, and identical because a building is a system just as any other such integrated structure is a system.
Frank Gehry is one of Canada-America's more esteemed architects. He does projects around the world. The picture is of the museum in Bilbao, Spain. Of course, Gehry always designs some pretty unusual stuff, but in an interesting interview on cnn.com/gps for September 4, 2011, he says about his projects:
Some of these problems are like any 'new to the world' endeavor: stuff happens! But some is just downright delusional or deliberately deceptive. Some advice just never gets old: Buyer beware!
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Frank Gehry is one of Canada-America's more esteemed architects. He does projects around the world. The picture is of the museum in Bilbao, Spain. Of course, Gehry always designs some pretty unusual stuff, but in an interesting interview on cnn.com/gps for September 4, 2011, he says about his projects:
- He's very thorough with the envisioning and conceptualization, often building 100 models before he 'sees' it. (Spiral, anyone?)
- Everything he does has customer buy-in, and in the end, the customer never regrets (Sounds like an embedded agile customer)
- The building has to work functionally (wow! it has to work. Have the ERP guys heard that one?)
- You have to be able to actually build it, meaning it has to be technologically feasible and feasibly economical (perhaps we should revisit the Sydney opera house--not a Gehry design), and
- It has to meet a budget! (Back to PM 101, and the consequences of "other people's money")
Some of these problems are like any 'new to the world' endeavor: stuff happens! But some is just downright delusional or deliberately deceptive. Some advice just never gets old: Buyer beware!
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